What do you think?
Rate this book
510 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
His life had become a broken mirror. He'd lied a lot and they'd lied to him a lot, but his return to Beirut and his consent to his brother's hospital construction project were the mistakes that had brought his whole story out into the open and shattered it, making it hard to gather up the slivers and put flesh back onto a life that had been smashed to pieces.In the opening chapter of this long novel, Karim Shammas, a Lebanese physician, is about to leave Beirut to return to Montpellier in France, where he practices in a hospital. But Khoury no sooner mentions this departure, which is interrupted by shelling, than he goes back to his earlier one, when Karim left Beirut for the first time. This is but one example of the author's tendency to conflate and telescope time. He does the same with people. In a single sentence, we learn about the recent death of Karim's father, a wealthy pharmacist, and his twin brother Nasim's plan to build a hospital. In six lines on the first page, Karim mentions four women that he has loved: Ghazala, Muna, Bernadette, and Hend. No explanation, just the names.